My Writing Process

I was tagged by the lovely and talented Robin Hall, who writes YA and MG and fabulous blog posts here.  (We also both did a study abroad to Israel within a semester of each other!  Who knew?!)    

What am I working on?

*An R&R with a fabulous agent on a contemporary YA love story.  It's Mansfield Park meets Anna and the French Kiss, and I love it.  I hope she'll love the revisions!  

*Drafting another YA contemporary that I can't tell if I love or if I'm just writing to fill the time so I don't work on my second draft of the book I REALLY want to be revising while my mind is gearing up to query my Mansfield book in the event the agent with the R&R says no...  And now I'm wondering if that even makes sense.  Huh.  

*Doing random bits of research for yet another YA contemporary I want to write (and, oh my gosh, I want to write this so badly.  It involves cancer, but it's NOT a cancer book, and I think it has the power to be poignant and heart-wrenching and funny and fabulous.  But I'm scared of it due to my family history of cancer, so I need to let it just hang out for a while while I build up my courage.).

How does my work differ from others of its genre?  

Yeesh, uh, I guess I can't write without love being part of the story, but I don't feel like my books are romance novels.  YA contemporary has so much romance in it that I feel like my books are simply YA contemporary with liberal amounts of near-kisses and crushes (and real kisses).  


The hallmark of my work is, I feel, hope.  I haven't had the easiest of lives, yet I've always had carried an un-squelch-able optimism with me.  Maybe it hasn't been there in the absolutely darkest moments (and I certainly wouldn't want to read about someone who was so put together that she never had a truly dark moment), but I rebound pretty quickly.  I need that quality in my characters.  Because people who dwell on the darkness and choose to stay and wallow in it make me want to punch myself in the face.  

That said, I don't mind a little darkness in my books.  It just can't eclipse the light.

Why do I write what I do?  

I love young adult literature.  I think it's more honest than so much of the adult stuff that's published, because teens call bull-pucky on anything that isn't authentic.  I want to write books that my nieces and, one day, my daughter can read.  Books that entertain them but that can give them perspective without having to reach all the way down into the ugliest parts of life.  That may not even sound possible, but I feel like it is.  I don't mind grit and ugliness when it serves a purpose, but it needs to serve a purpose for me to justify including it.  I want my daughter to be proud of me when she's old enough to read my stuff.  And I want her to swoon over the cute boys without thinking her mom is gross for writing about kissing.  Which will totally happen, because I'm awesome and she'll always know that.  Always. 

How does my writing process work?

With the help of Mini Eggs and Diet Pepsi while my daughter naps.  

The second an idea takes hold, I have to write down whatever I "saw" of it.  The scene, the question that caused the "OH MY GOSH!" moment in my head, or whatever.  But then once it's written down, I like swimming in the idea for a while.  I like researching enough to understand what I can/can't do with it.  Then I think about the conflict and the plot.

I've recently started using beat sheets that I got from Jamie Gold's website.  They're incredibly helpful, and they're my favorite plotting tool (and my only plotting tool, honestly.  I don't love detailed plotting.).

Once that's done, I write at a decent pace, but not a breakneck one.  I don't like leaving ugly sentences and misspelled words on a page, so I correct those as I go.  If my first draft is too ugly, I won't want to do a second draft because it will feel overwhelming.  

Then it's off to my sissy-poo, who reads all my stuff before everything else, and I incorporate her feedback before revising and sending it off to my CP's.  I have two rounds of CP's and their accompanying revisions before I send the work to my brilliant teen beta readers for final approval.  Then...query time!  And hopefully soon, that means agent time, and editor time, and published book time.  :) 




I'd love to know your thoughts and, if you're a writer, your process!  In the meantime, I'm tagging the brilliant wordsmiths and grammarians, Heather Romito and Elizabeth Gilliland.  Check out their blogs next Monday for how they create awesomeness.